Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Templates

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Can template entries be redirects? At Template:Allegan County, Michigan, all but one of the unincorporated communities are redirects (and they all redirect to the townships listed elsewhere in the template). Is there some consensus about the use of redirects within a template? Thank you. Magnolia677 (talk) 22:58, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

My mistake. All the unincorporated communities are piped, and each community is also redirected to the township, such at Macatawa, Michigan. I've never seen that done on a US county template. Generally, when there is no article written about the unincorporated community, editors add either a redlink or the unlinked name of the community. Magnolia677 (talk) 23:29, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Again, these are not redirects. All entries are piped. Since none of the articles about the communities exist (all are redirects such as Burnips) there's effectively no difference between Burnips and Burnips. If someone clicks on the Burnips link and finds there is no article, they are welcome to usurp the redirect. Primefac (talk) 01:48, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

@Primefac: Has there been some discussion about adding piped entries to a template in this way? Magnolia677 (talk) 13:47, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Magnolia677, what do you mean? There are piped entries everywhere on Wikipedia. As near as I can tell, piping links in that template doesn't break any of the EASTEREGG rules, given that the subjects are mentioned in the end article. Primefac (talk) 13:57, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Was asked by Magnolia677 to chime in here. I actually prefer the redlinks to the piped links. When an entry is piped like that, it gives editors the impression that the article about that location exists, and might dissuade editors from working on a new article. Primefac is precisely correct that if an editor clicks on the link and finds that the link takes him to a different target, then they can find out the article doesn't exist and at that point decide whether to work on a new article. I think the concept is covered in WP:EASTER, in that you have to click on the link to discover an article doesn't actually exist. I would recommend creating redlinks. The fact that the original name in the bluelink is mentioned in the target article does not appear to overcome Easter. In fact, the examples listed show that the link takes them to an article which does mention the topic (although not exactly in the manner in which these piped links are used in this instance). In fact, I got admonished by an admin for doing exactly that. Had something to do with creating an extra operation, thus slowing down (however microscopically) editing time. Onel5969TT me 14:11, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the handful I checked are all redirects, so you'd be linking to a redirect anyway. Yes, I can agree that it would then allow for easier "oh this page doesn't exist yet" realization, but I'm saying we don't have a hard-and-fast "you are not allowed to pipe links in templates" rule. Primefac (talk) 14:13, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

It's true that this is a mostly Michigan issue. Magnolia677 has also asked me to comment. My personal preference in this case is to keep the piped links, as the linked articles all clearly list the unincorporated places. I would prefer to see it that way than red links in a template, which I, for better or worse, would be inclined to delete. --Ken Gallager (talk) 14:19, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

In my opinion, section-divided navboxes should only have two types of links: to redlinks that are likely to get articles (e.g. {{Linn County, Missouri}} has links to townships that don't yet have articles) that would fit into that section, and links to extant articles that fit in that section. [[X Township|Unincorporated community in X Township]] isn't appropriate: if it doesn't deserve an article, it doesn't deserve to be linked in the template. Nyttend (talk) 14:26, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

A more experienced group of editors on this topic would be hard to find, and I appreciate your diverse opinions. As with many human endeavors, it was something beautiful that motivated my question here. Magnolia677 (talk) 14:40, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Nyttend makes a good point, so in the interest of "should this be here?" I've converted the pipes to their main redirect page. End result is the same, but at least it lets us see what actually exists (which, at the moment, is only Pullman, Michigan). Primefac (talk) 14:47, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Either you disagree with me, or you misunderstand me :-) All links should be direct; see WP:BRINT, a provision that's routinely enforced by bots. And aside from redlinks, each link should go to an article about the "displayed" subject; if X Place is a redirect to Y Township, we shouldn't have a link to X Place at all. Nyttend (talk) 15:48, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

I think I took the two halves of your statement separately (and specifically, [[X Township|Unincorporated community in X Township]] isn't appropriate). So I guess to actually ask the question - do we need links to unincorporated communities in the Allegan template? Primefac (talk) 16:11, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

In that template, I think we should have links to unincorporated communities that have their own articles and unincorporated communities that are redlinks, but not otherwise. Burnips, for example, shouldn't be mentioned at all, unless someone writes an article about it first. Nyttend (talk) 21:21, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

PS, to explain myself better: in my opinion, each name in a section should be linked to a separate article, and articles shouldn't be linked in multiple sections unless they really are multiple entities. Since we routinely distinguish between census-designated places and other communities (although I think Michigan doesn't generally do this), I'm not talking about those. The only instance coming to mind is townships that get designated as CDPs in their entirety, so we should list them both in the townships line and the CDPs line, as is done at {{Whitley County, Indiana}} because the CDP of "Tri-Lakes" is identical to Thorncreek Township. Since these communities aren't identical to their townships, the situation as described at the start of this article is problematic, and references to these communities should be removed. Nyttend (talk) 22:01, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

I think a relevant point here is that unincorporated communities in Michigan are documented differently than unincorporated communities in pretty much any other state; anywhere else, these communities would either have their own articles or still be red links. The logic for why Michigan is different is that as long as the separate articles would be stubs indefinitely, there's no reason to split them out of the township articles until someone wanted to write a longer article about them. (I don't entirely agree with that reasoning and have had discussions about this many years ago, which led to the consensus that Michigan would stay the way it was but we wouldn't do that for any of the other states.) I can't imagine the Michigan editors would want this to imply that communities in Michigan should be left out of the navbox, though.

You describe the situation accurately. There's no good reason to treat Michigan localities differently, but unless we stop bowing to one person's ownership of the whole state, we should implement WP:RED's provisions by removing links to titles that aren't likely to get articles. Nyttend (talk) 02:09, 16 August 2017 (UTC)